Thursday, November 27, 2008

The Street Fighter Blog Reviews SSF2THD Remix

Ah, feels so good to finally have my hands on SSF2T HD Remix, the one game i waited so long for, but enough of that, i give you here myReview of SSF2THD Remix:

Anybody of you remembers the feeling we had when we played super street fighter 2 for the first time in 1992? that excitement of wanting to try everything new since Street Fighter II turbo on snes? that feeling of being amazed by the music and graphics of the game? that same feeling that makes you want to talk to all your friends on the next school day and tell them how awesome the game you played last night is? Well guys and gals i had that same feeling again after i layed my hands on SSF2T HD Remix.

Presentation:

Unfortunately we do not see Ryu shooting hadoken towards the screen in HD, but the menus are in Hd, clear, and right to the point. You have the bility to choose between single player on multiplayer. You have access to options that very clear and gives you total control over the game. the dip switch options lets you change evry single thing you could think of about the game, such as damage of Akuma etc. An option to switch to old 16bit Sprites and original music is also availabe.

Presentation score: 9.5/10

Graphics:

Udon delivers again, the beautiful new HD sprites drawn by the talented people behind the excellent Street Fighter Comic series looks stunning on HD sets. The backgrounds are really colorful and vivid. Select Screen have never looked better with great looking portraits. Charcaters look big and menacing (bison, sagat, zangief) and endings are all well drawn and last longer (endings are now 4 to 5 pictures unlike the previous versions where they were only 2) When it comes to graphics, the game really feels more like a new game than a revision of ssf2t

Graphics Score: 10/10

Gameplay:

You probably know this by now, but hd graphics are not the only changes in SSF2THD Remix. David Sirlin, a Street Fighter tournaments veteran was responsible for re-balancing the whole game, since we all know that the original SSF2T was not well balanced. What that means is that we dont have high tier characters and low tier characters, the re-balancing help made the characters all pretty much in the same tier, making Fei-long and Cammy for example highly usable. So far this is working and the rebalancing feels great.

Capcom also made pulling some difficult moves easier, Sagat's tiger knee is done with shoryuken motion now, 360 moves have been made easier and characters now have some new moves (Ryu's fake hadolen, bison's fake slide etc) which adds to the gameplay. To read the full list of changes made to every character, check Sirlin's website here.

Gameplay score: 10/10

Sound:

In addition to new graphics and new gameplay elements, the sound in HD Remix has also received an update. Every music track from the original game has been redone by the OCremix group (a group of talented musicians who are big fans of the Street Fighter series) and boy! does it deliver! The music of every single stage is, in my humble opinion, far superior than the original tunes and probably because of the use of modern music instruments. There were backgound music tracks that i used to hate in the original game that i now love because of HD Remix (Bison's stage and Dhalsim's).

The lame announcer from the super street fighter series has been replaced by a new one that might needs more time from us to get used to him but nonetheless sounds great. Guile's sonic boom voice that was the reason for thousands of complaints when super street fighter 2 was released has been replaced by the original voice from Street Fighter 2 and Turbo games.

sound score: 10/10

Online:

One of the main reasons that so many people have bought the game and were excited about is the ability to play against your friends around the globe and spam them with endless hadokens and tiger shots. The online options in SSF2THD Remix allows to: Play ranked matches to climb up the world leaderboard, play friendly quarter matches where you create a room of up to 6 people battle it out like in the arcades glorious time where the winner stays and the looser gets to spectate. last online option available is tournament mode, where you can participate in an 8 players tournament and see who will defeat sheng long to stand a chance ;)

But how does the Online deliver? While SSF2T HD Remix's online is great and by far the best online code i have seen in a console based 2d fighting game, it is no ggpo nor 2df and the lag can get really annoying.

I have the ps3 version and the online experience can sometimes get ruined with a bunch of bugs i have found (random disconnects while joining a game, freezes during vs screens and error codes while joining a game ....)

According to internet reports, both the 360 version and the ps3 version suffer from these bugs and glitches but the PS3 version seems to be the inferior one in terms of Online code and that could be due to the fact that the Xbox360 benifited from the beta which helped Capcom polish the net code.

i had the beta on the xbox 360, and the problems i have encountered on the ps3 version are very similar to the beta issues on the 360 before it was patched. But Rest Assured, i am 100% sure Capcom will patch the game the same way they did for the beta. Sven from Capcom Unity has already reported that they are looking at the issues and examining the causes.

All bugs and Glitches aside, the online is really great when it works, fighting against friends or random people in street fighter is really amazing. I had fun with a lot of you guys from the Blog and i was honored to meet you and im looking forward to play against you again ;)

Online Score: 7.5/10 (the online part will be re-reviewed once capcom patches the game)

All in all, SSF2T HD Remix looks great and plays great, the changes made by Capcom to the gameplay and the new tools that every character got gives us old timers a reason to play the game and try every new move. The online is not what i hoped it would be, with some lag and few bugs and glitches (that i am sure/hope capcom will fix) makes the netcode quite inferior to the famous ggpo client. The price tag is very reasonable and the game is worth every penny you spent on it since this is truly the definitive Street Fighter 2 game that we will be playing for years to come.

10 comments:

feii
said...

nice review.

sorry to hear about the online issues with the PS3. for xbox live, it's been very very fun and addicting. it isn't 100 percent perfect, but i am impressed with how it turned out. MUCH better than the older street fighter game on xbox live.

The graphics are NOT 10/10. From the looks of it, Udon really only did the character portraits and supplied model sheets for the in game animation. Anybody who knows anything about the human body and design knows that the in game art is atrocious.

Well I played it briefly over the weekend. I like it but it almost feels like a different game, it is not a huge difference but enough to throw you off. Maybe I need to play it more, I swear they extended DeeJay's recovery time after he throws a Maxout?!?! Which resulted in me getting kicked afterwards....maybe it was just me